Here is the interactive map featuring 4000 years of battles

A Dutch company has create an interactive map of the world that displays all locations of every war and battle that has taken place over the last four thousand years. We at SciencePost present for you the map, with a focus on Great Britain.

Pim van Bree and Geert Kessels in 2011 created the company LAB1100 based in La Haye, in the Netherlands. This research and development company is specialised in the development of tools (software, apps, etc) dealing with new medias or like in this case, history. LAB1100 collaborated with other research institutes and universities.

The interactive map of battles of the last four millennia is part of the data-visualization process. It integrates, via DBpedia and Wikidata, data concerning the locations of the battles, as well as their date.

The map, on a grey background, displays numerous dots of colour from beige to dark red (from oldest to the most recent). Each dot represents a battle, and we immediately notice a dense covering over Europe, where the available data is most complete. As well as being due to the first inhabited lands, before many other world countries were discovered.

Note that there are no border boundaries displayed on the map, obviously to make it easier to read, but mainly because this type of information is not needed for this document, it is a focus on showing over 4000 years of history of the battles.

What happens when we focus on the United Kingdom? We immediately notice that the majority of the wars happened between 200 to 1500 and 1500 and 1914, shown by the light beige and orange dots and mostly located in land rather than along the coast line, like neighboring France.

Once you click on one of the dots, information about that battle become available, with the precise date, coordinates, the source of the information as well as the battle name. Here is an example of the Battle of Hastings. Once you click on the dot a box opens up showing the date is started, 20th October 1066 and its exact location.